Video: Kira Davis’ open letter to MSNBC’s Toure

posted at 12:41 pm on August 17, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

After Toure’s assertion that Joe Biden’s “chains” comment was not racial but Mitt Romney’s criticism of it and the tone of the Obama/Biden team somehow was, I was by turns annoyed at the hypocrisy, outraged at the crudity in which it was expressed, and saddened by the unrelenting desire of a portion of the commentariat on the Left to smear anyone who opposes Barack Obama and his policies as racists and haters. I’m glad that Allahpundit wrote the excellent post, rather than me; I needed more time to approach the issue rationally, and frankly to pray about it and for our nation.

Later yesterday evening, I saw this video from young African-American conservative Kira Davis posted by Duane Lester, and earlier this morning by Jim Treacher. Kira harshly rebukes Toure for smearing Romney, but her entire missive has food for thought for everyone:

I read your comments about Mitt Romney today and they made me sick to my stomach, and very angry. You accuse Romney of “niggerizing” Obama. There is so much wrong with that statement, I hardly know where to begin. You see, that word…nigger….it means something. It means something very real to people like me who actually have intimate, firsthand knowledge of how it can be applied. I resent that you would use that so easily (though you claim it wasn’t ‘easy’, I don’t believe you). You used that term to get some press. Great. Mission accomplished. But in the process you have watered down a term of hate with deep historical significance by applying it where it most certainly does not fit.

But that doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist, either. Kira has experienced it, which is why she’s angry that commentators like Toure minimize its “horror” by conflating disagreement with actual hate:

Toure, I’ve seen hate up close. I know what it looks like. I’ve felt it’s hands on my skin, seen the look in its eyes, felt the burn of its words. It is deliberate and it is real. Racism is not disliing our black President because of his socialist leanings. Racism is the scar I carried near my lip for decades after one particularly harsh punch in the mouth from a kid screaming “NIGGER!” at me while swinging away. Racism is that guy in the diner, the hoses and dogs turned on folks from my grandparent’s generation just looking to drink at a decent water fountain. When you accuse a person of racism, THAT is the legacy of hate you are laying at their feet. It’s every bit as heinous as accusing someone of being a child molester arbitrarily. When you accuse Mitt Romney and other conservatives like me of being racist based on no other proof besides the fact that we vehemently disagree with this President and his policies, you dilute the history and experiences of people like me. You cheapen that word – nigger. You rob it of it’s true horror – a horror we should never forget or take for granted.Not only that, Toure; but you cheapen yourself. You make it clear to blacks like me that you, indeed have no clue in hell what real racism is or where it can be found.

Accusing Mitt Romney of the “niggerization” of Obama is ugly, base, cheap and just plain wrong. You owe him and people like an apology. You seem like an intelligent guy. If you disagree with Mitt Romney and me, do so on the merits of the issues at hand. Don’t prostitute yourself on a network that it more way more white (percentage-wise) than the Republican party. It’s a song and dance eerily similar the minstrel shows of the past. You and I know full well the execs at MSNBC laugh and applaud and sign your paycheck every time you put on your tap shoes. Don’t like that reference? Hey, as you said so yourself, Im just using the same old race-baiting playbook you and the Democrats have been using for decades.

You should be embarrassed.

I mention this because too often we forget that real racism still exists. There are actual virulent racists who make life hell for people like Kira, not because they disagree with her political point of view, but because they actually hate her for the color of her skin. Unfortunately, few people who sin in this fashion can be transformed through blaming politicians for arguing over legitimate policy differences. We can — and we havebeen, imperfectly at times — remove racism from government policy and enforcement, but passing laws will not change the hearts of those who hate. It just keeps them from using the power of government as a vehicle for putting their hate into action.

Keep that in mind when applauding Kira for her pushback against Toure. There are more lessons to learn from Kira than just that MSNBC hired a hack.

Speaking of which, Dana Milbank takes Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center to task for doing exactly what Toure did — equating political disagreement with hatred, and cheapening the latter to score a few bogus points for their own political point of view:

I disagree with the Family Research Council’s views on gays and lesbians. But it’s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church. The center says the FRC “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.” Exhibit A in its dossier is a quote by an FRC official from 1999 (!) saying that “gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”

Offensive, certainly. But in the same category as the KKK?

Since the shooting, conservatives have complained that the media have played down the story. This probably has less to do with bias than with the fact that nobody was killed. Still, there is something to the complaint.

Milbank uses the “pox upon both their houses” to a large extent in this column, but he’s right on the core of his argument. Organizations like SPLC and HRC have gone from the legitimate warning of actual hate groups that represent potential for danger and violence to claiming everyone who disagrees with their point of view belong in the same category as the Aryan Nation. It goes beyond “absurd,” and does real damage to efforts to those who want to end actual hatred.

Blowback

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Let’s also not pretend that this applies for “people like Kira”, it applies to people like, well… everyone.

Please refer back to vids from a couple of days ago from the NBP party for quite recent evidence of virulent, real, angry, and dangerous racism on display. It’s not solely the realm of white people directing it at black people.

Midas on August 17, 2012 at 1:49 PM

As someone with a niece who is half white and half Cambodian, but because of her ’round eye’ (as her other grandmother likes to call her) and her darker skin, is often mistaken for being Mexican? Yeah, it does.

I can even remember tense discussions back during high school among light-skinned black girls and dark-skinned black girls. You want to talk about racism? Wander into one of those discussions. Very eye-opening how some of them see each other based on how dark they are (or aren’t), despite being of the same race.

Thank you Kira. Although I am white I have chosen to raise my half Asian children in environments where they experience all Races, Creeds and Colors. I do so even though many of my neighbors will call me a racist simply because I am a republican.

It amazes me how often Democrats get a pass on their overt racism. This even though it was Democrats and not republicans who drove the KKKs power in the south for generations. This includes Al Gores Father. We are truly living in post 1984 where these “leaders” change the meaning of words to punish all who oppose them.

The depressingly sad thing is that Touré himself probably bears a few childhood scars from the viciousness of real racists, just like Kira Davis, as opposed to the imaginary racism he’s inventing for the benefit of the Obama campaign.

Imagine, sacrificing your own hard-earned knowledge and experience, the truth of real racial hatred in your own life, or what you’ve seen firsthand experienced by other family and friends, for this easily brushed-aside fictional nullity that he substitutes on tv for the real thing. Is there nothing the Left does not demand of its acolytes? When a cracker liberal pol talks down to you in crude Southern black dialect, you shout ‘amen’ and those who don’t are the Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas?

This old timer, who grew up in the great depression alongside black neighbors and friends, has never seen the level of racism as at present until the Black Community became the number one voting weapon of the left. You on the left have made a policy of systematically agitating race and victimization that you–not they–might gain power for yourselves. Certainly not for the poor and impoverished. If you ever really eradicated poverty and brought peace and love to the issue–you’d be out of politics because you have no other method but to divide this nation in a million destructive ways.

The evil you leftist folks spread upon America in your quest to control and fundamentally take it down, is the stuff of Hades. You are incapable of shame for your consciences have atrophied long ago, and now you are left with little more purpose than attempting to destroy the good that’s left in our corrupted culture.

Yes, that’s the Godless left-the slave masters of the souls of millions of poor people who have had the misfortune of hitching their hopes to Obama and the liberal machine that uses them as if they were common chattel.

Wow. I was angry at Toure for his cheap comment, but there is nothing I could ever come close to saying that would be as powerful as what this lady said. After that, Toure, if he has a shred of decency in him, can do very little but hang his head in shame.

This was a Cincinnati story. The races weren’t mentioned. One could gather the kids were black, but until you showed me the photo of the victim I didn’t know his race. According to the local story he had “severe internal injuries”. If the races were reversed, we still wouldn’t know if it was a racial crime, but you can be sure it would be all over the national news. As it is, it’s a non-story. Last year about 1/2 mile from my home a younger black guy had a confrontation on the street with a very drunk unarmed older white guy and knifed him in the neck, killing him. That was also a non-story. He was acquitted on the theory he was provoked. Again, a non-story.

Imagine, sacrificing your own hard-earned knowledge and experience, the truth of real racial hatred in your own life, or what you’ve seen firsthand experienced by other family and friends, for this easily brushed-aside fictional nullity that he substitutes on tv for the real thing.

de rigueur on August 17, 2012 at 2:21 PM

This gets me too. You trade in your visceral, hard-won experience of truth for a leftist politically correct lie. But I’m just repeating what you wrote. But it’s beyond my understanding.

Toure and those like him are not followers of MLK. They are the wannabe followers of Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, and H Rap Brown. I wonder if Toure would come out and say something like “how many White folks did you kill today?” Maybe, but basically Toure is all talk. He would never have the guts to do what the early Black Panthers and SNCC did. He’s just a little weasel pretending to be tough and all ‘in the hood.’

correction to earlier post:
I left out an important word: sixteen
That is, until she was 16 she experienced basically daily racial hatred and it was all in Canada! So those daily beatdowns weren’t taking place in the US, but in our supposedly virtuous neighbor to the north.
I thought it was worth pointing out.

I can even remember tense discussions back during high school among light-skinned black girls and dark-skinned black girls. You want to talk about racism? Wander into one of those discussions. Very eye-opening how some of them see each other based on how dark they are (or aren’t), despite being of the same race.

tdpwells on August 17, 2012 at 2:04 PM

IN the late 70s or early 80s there was a skit on SNL (before they were chicken s**t) with cast member, Garrett Morris and host Julian Bond. The set up was an interview/talk show with Bond as the host. He (very light skinned) was talking to Morris (very dark skinned) about different issues of blacks in America.

After a minute or two Bond throws out, as if it were established fact, “well it’s known that light skinned blacks are more intelligent than dark skinned blacks, so therefore …..” The look on Morris’ face when he heard it was classic. He then responded with the appropriate outrage.

To think that the same skit would ever be done again, let alone for any kind of serious discussion of black/white relations in this country, by today’s press corps is laughable. I was hopeful that when the Jackson/Sharpton crowd began dying off that perhaps race would mean less than it does. This guy, Tourd’ (remove the O) is proving that a new generation of race-baiting hucksters is going to replace the old guard.

Wow. My admiration for you and your message is boundless, Kira. God bless you and keep on speaking out.

The GOP really needs to give her a speaker’s spot at the convention.

Imagine, sacrificing your own hard-earned knowledge and experience, the truth of real racial hatred in your own life, or what you’ve seen firsthand experienced by other family and friends, for this easily brushed-aside fictional nullity that he substitutes on tv for the real thing.

de rigueur on August 17, 2012 at 2:21 PM

This has always baffled me, too. I’m too much a fan of reality. I simply can’t understand how any Leftist can wake up, experience life in all its manifestations — the ugly and the good — and convince themselves or give an ounce of credence to others who say that a situation really didn’t happen the way they actually experienced it. You would think that the level of denial would at some point crash right into the reality of a situation. It must take tremendous mental energy to continue to lie to oneself like that, the self-hate is that deep.

As it is, it’s a non-story. Last year about 1/2 mile from my home a younger black guy had a confrontation on the street with a very drunk unarmed older white guy and knifed him in the neck, killing him. That was also a non-story. He was acquitted on the theory he was provoked. Again, a non-story.

Paul-Cincy on August 17, 2012 at 2:39 PM

A “non-story”?? Only when you look at it in isolation. Read 100,000 stories like that, then suddenly it becomes something else.

Wow! I love this young woman and hate the fact that she had to go through her young life with the abuse she took.
Good for you gal! I hope Romney sees this and has her in some of his ads. She is “smart, articulate, clean (oh, sorry it’s hard to imitate biden). She is a class act!
Thanks for being the example that toure and obama should be!

Toure provides a real example of racism and bigotry, his own, towards both his ‘own’ people and against caucasians. How else to explain his seeing ‘racism!!!1!’ where there wasn’t any? He saw / heard ‘thug’ and HE thought of blacks, leapt to the conclusion-assertion that ROmney’s a racist. That’s besides the defacto assertion that any criticism of Obama is ‘racist!’.

Listen up all you liberal / black grievance mongers – we don’t like Obama because he’s RED, not because he’s (half-) black. RED f’n Marxist.

Beautiful, smart, and obviously deeply affected by the horrible treatment she has received from some moronic, evil souls. But Toure doesn’t give a rip about the truth, or other peoples’ feelings, he just likes running his mouth on television. Lovely Kira should debate him. That would be thoroughly enjoyable.

About Obama, he told POLITICO: “In many ways — especially for progressives — [Obama] is too white for them. He plays golf, he’s too cozy with bankers. But when it comes to knowing how to fight, he’s black” — referring to the tough campaign Obama is running against the Republicans.

This is the SECOND fantastic “open letter” from Davis. The first was a scathing commentary on the corrupt, self-serving, largely anti-American, bite-the-hand-that-feeds-him, piece of excrement ruling Afghanistan, Karzai. I’d highly recommend you view that one also (on the net.)

The depressingly sad thing is that Touré himself probably bears a few childhood scars from the viciousness of real racists, just like Kira Davis, as opposed to the imaginary racism he’s inventing for the benefit of the Obama campaign.

No. He was the kid who got his ass whipped on the playground for being a smartass with a chip on his shoulder.

Having grown up around Black Kids and known portions of the Black population nearly all of my adult life, I can say without a hint of remorse that I am sick of all this pompous pretentious ‘it happened to me’ BS.

Black kids are raised to consider the word unspeakable. It is a right of passage for young men to assert their right to cuss (around the proper people) and then learn restraint.

Considering what the Soviets went through, what the Jews went through in the last century, and what women in the middle east go through right now… pompous is the only word I can think of.
Oh, and by the way, Kira Davis is a phony, pretend opportunist. Does she really think she hurt more than any other kid who got hit or had people glare at them?

Not offensive. True. The gay community is divided with respect to their alignment to NAMBLA, but the fact that influential gays see (or saw) NAMBLA as their brethren, rather than running to get as far away as possible, is telling.

Well….she’s right! Fool is making a living dancing for the crowd trying to mix in with Dem black folks. They give him a coin, he chirps real pretty, says just what they want to hear. Man without a soul.

On the subject of rage: I’ll say it again. What motivates the conservative defense movement (the Tea Prty, et. al.) is not rage but outrage. Rage is against persons, groups, classes. Outrage is against ideas, actions, policies. Rage is aggressive. Outrage is a defensive reaction. It wants to protect and restore, not to hurt and destroy.

The Left is good at rage. It sustains them as the aggressors in the culture wars. The Right is discovering how to use outrage, and how to motivate themselves with it to rally themselves to the defense of the culture that birthed and nurtured them.

Great work Kira!! Welcome to the American Party! Hope to see more of you! In the meantime, I am writing MSNBC asking them to put Toure on Hardball with Chrissy “Tingles” Matthews. They make a great pair! They can jerk each other off during commercials. Then they will be happier and maybe have a better show!

It amazes me how often Democrats get a pass on their overt racism. This even though it was Democrats and not republicans who drove the KKKs power in the south for generations. This includes Al Gores Father. We are truly living in post 1984 where these “leaders” change the meaning of words to punish all who oppose them.

huskerthom on August 17, 2012 at 2:11

Lot’s of culpability to go all around, however, your premise is correct. The Democratic Party was the party of Jim Crow, segregation and slavery. The historical support from minorities for the Democrats on the basis of racism is ludicrous.

On the subject of rage: I’ll say it again. What motivates the conservative defense movement (the Tea Prty, et. al.) is not rage but outrage. Rage is against persons, groups, classes. Outrage is against ideas, actions, policies. Rage is aggressive. Outrage is a defensive reaction. It wants to protect and restore, not to hurt and destroy.

The Left is good at rage. It sustains them as the aggressors in the culture wars. The Right is discovering how to use outrage, and how to motivate themselves with it to rally themselves to the defense of the culture that birthed and nurtured them.

Kira, Thank you for sharing your story. It was very moving to a middle class white Long Island boy. I thank you for teaching me and others about your reality, something most middle class white Long Island boys never seemed to learn very well. On a side note, I look forward to your next story/comment/essay about life in California. You must not only keep us in the know, but those others who refuse listen and learn. Keep it up, never ever give up. God truly loves you.
Love ya too, Sgt Pete

Progressives routinely define “good” and “evil” entirely in political terms.

Good and evil describe individual choices and acts, like deciding to wait patiently for the old guy with the gout issues who’s blocking the door at the supermarket (good) or grousing at him for blocking your way (evil.) The former exhibits a virtue called “patience” and another called “kindness,” while the latter exhibits a vice called “self-centeredness” and possibly also “cruelty.” Ed Morrissey, educated by Catholics, understands this, I’m sure.

Most progressives do not understand this. They have come to define “good” as the pursuit of their political goals. “Protecting the environment,” meaning any political activism aimed at enforcing environmentalism against those who resist it, is a virtue, more important than prudence. “Empowering the poor,” meaning advocating laws transferring tax money to poor people in any form and for any reason, is a virtue, more important than “charity” (in fact, that’s how they’re apt to define “charity.”)

Thus, we all heard Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings describe Bill Clinton as “such a good man — he protects the environment, he empowers the poor, he defends women,” despite the fact they knew perfectly well that he was a compulsive liar, almost certainly a serial rapist, and very likely a sociopath. The things that actually define “good” and “evil” are no longer important to them…

For this reason, they define “conservative” to mean “evil.” To them, it does literally mean that — because “good,” to them, means their own policy choices.

For this reason, also, they have abandoned all restraint against opposing conservatives. They scruple no lie, no slur, no inconsistency: it’s all justified by the fact that they are “good,” and conservatives, “evil.”

And for this reason they have actually abandoned the pursuit of virtue, and have become virtueless, even vicious. The average progressive is unconscious of their selfishness, crudeness, or even their own racial bigotry. How could they be any of those things? They’re completely virtuous, by virtue of holding the right, political opinions.

And that is what makes them dangerous; they think themselves the best of humanity, while they are gradually becoming the worst.